


The Ice King's Daughter

by Cadhla



Series: Sailor Moon Fairy Tales [2]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Gen, Rabbit in the Moon, Rabbits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5569087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cadhla/pseuds/Cadhla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a fairy tale in everything, if looked at from the right direction, in the right light. This is the fairy tale of the Ice King's daughter, and everything she lost, and gained, by the light of a loving moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ice King's Daughter

Once upon a time, in a kingdom very far away from here, so far away that they do not even share the same winds, because the winds of this land are warm and wistful things, and they do not like the cold, there was a glacier. And on that glacier was a kingdom, carved from ice and sustained by clever magic, which brought forth winter apples and snowflake grain. And in that kingdom was a palace, blue and white and silver, all the colors of the glorious cold. Where there is a palace, there must be a king and a queen, and where there is a king and queen, one day, there will be a princess. This is her story, for their story ended long ago, with happy ever after, which is the kiss that closes all things. Never wish an ever after on anyone; ever after ends adventure.

This princess was very far from ever after: her adventures were only just beginning. She was a small thing, slight as a whisper, slender as a smile, with hair the color of deep glacial ice, and eyes only slightly darker. While most princesses her age dreamt of princes and balls, of advantageous marriages and beautiful gowns, this princess dreamt only of her kingdom, and of the clever magic she would need to learn if she wished to protect her people. Flesh does not blend easily with ice, you see, and should the spells falter even once, all would be lost forever.

We think we know ice, here in the lands where seasons come one after the other, playful as puppies. We think we know snow and cold. But what we know here is nothing to the lands of endless winter, where a moment’s indiscretion could spell damnation. The princess grew up knowing that one day, everything would be on her shoulders; one day, her cleverness alone would keep the cold at bay. It was a great burden to set on one so young, and bit by bit, it pressed the laughter from her heart, until she was the only one in the kingdom who was not warmed by her father’s spells, nor shielded by her mother’s charms. In the kingdom of ice, the princess froze.

One day, as the princess sat in the garden of snow roses with her mother, reading from her book of wards and protections, a group of the palace children ran by. They were laughing and throwing snowballs at one another, and it made the queen smile to see them. “Look, my daughter,” she said. “Look how they play. Go with them for a time. Learn their game. It will do you good, to run.”

“There is not time, mother,” said the princess. “Please excuse me.” Then she stood and returned to the library, where no one laughed, and it would not matter that she knew all the names for ice and snow, all the signs that a shield was failing, but did not know how to play.

Not long after that, word came to the palace that a foreign king was to pass through their frozen land, with all his court in attendance. The king and queen declared that there must be a feast, and called for the travelers to dine with them. This visiting king was from a land where it was always daylight, and the sun was always bright upon the grass. He was seated across from the princess, and it made him smile to see her, for he had a daughter just her age.

But the princess did not smile, and when the jesters and merrymakers came to ply their trade, she did not laugh, but put her plate aside and excused herself to return to the library, where no one looked on her with pity, and it would not matter that she knew all the songs of winter coming, all the sighs of snowfall nearing, but did not know how to smile.

The foreign king returned home to his own bright and beautiful daughter, and held her close, and thought how sad it was that the princess he had seen should be so cold, and seem so very far from happiness.

Now, it would be incorrect to say that the princess had no friends, for all that she did not associate with the other children. The palace librarian loved her dearly, as did all her teachers. And always, of course, there was the moon.

Her window was wide and open, as befitted a princess, and allowed her to look out on all the kingdom. During the day, the view spoke to her only of responsibilities to come, of tests that must not be failed. But at night, when the stark edges of the ice softened with twinkling lights, she could admit that it was beautiful. She would sit on her balcony and look at the moon, wishing they could speak. Surely the moon would understand.

“I am very lonely, and I do not know what to do,” she said to the moon. “None of my books can tell me what the cure for loneliness is, and none of my teachers seem to know the way to unseal my lips and bring the words I know I could speak out of me. No one listened for so long, and now I cannot speak to them, because I am so cold, and I am frightened of what they would think of me. I am tired of expectations. I am tired of solitude. I am tired of everything, and I do not know what to do.”

That night, she slept with her window standing open to the cold night air, and she dreamt that the moon was a girl in a gold and silver dress, with silver snowballs in her hair. They walked together until dawn, and what the moon told her was forgotten when the morning came. The princess awoke feeling somehow calmed, like everything was going to change, even though she could not have articulated why. That should have frightened her, for she was not accustomed to not knowing, but in this case, in this single time, she did not worry.

That day, a messenger came to her father’s court. He dropped to one knee, cheeks red with frostbite, and gasped, “Your Majesty, there is word from the north. A great beast that breathes cold deeper than we have ever known has risen from the snows, and all who face it wither. We are done. We are doomed.” Then he fell, and when the king’s guards ran to him, they found that he was dead, frozen straight through.

The court fell into arguing, everyone crying that something must be done to stop the beast; that the kingdom must be saved. But no one volunteered, nor dared to risk themselves against such a foe. The king cried for a champion, and was not answered.

Then, in the silence that followed, the queen looked to him and asked a terrible question.

“Where is she?” asked the queen. “Where is our daughter?”

The king set all his men to searching the palace, to no avail; the princess was far and away, trudging through the snow as she walked to the north. The wind whipped hard behind her, blowing her footprints into nothingness.

She did not feel the cold, for she knew her father’s clever spells by heart, and could shield herself against it. She did not hunger, for she had packed a satchel before she left, carrying dried meats, sweet carrots, and of course, winter apples, which were blue of skin but filling in the stomach. All she could not carry was water, and she could fill her hands with snowflakes any time her need grew strong, using the heat of her own skin, for all that it was barely warmer than the snow, to melt as much as she wanted.

She had walked for the better part of a day when something moved in the snow ahead of her. She stopped, readying her clever spells, only to see a white rabbit hopping closer, all but invisible against the winter landscape. “Hello, rabbit,” she said, for the shyness that stopped her tongue with people did not extend to animals which could not talk back.

“Hello, princess,” said the rabbit.

The princess paled. “Y-you speak.”

“I do. Where are you going?”

“There is a beast that harms my kingdom. It must be stopped, and I have studied very hard.”

“Studying is a good thing, but it will not protect you completely,” said the rabbit. “Give me some of the food you carry, and I will help you.”

The princess was not as cold-hearted as the people thought her to be, and she spread half the food she carried on the snow for the rabbit to enjoy. The creature was small, but it made short work of the meal. She had never seen a rabbit eat so much, so fast, and something about it made her face feel strange. She reached up to touch her mouth, trying to find the source of the strangeness.

“You are smiling, princess,” said the rabbit. “Now. I said I would help you, and I will help you. You are a princess of ice and cold, but coldness is only a weapon against the self, not against the world. You must warm the beast.”

“But I have nothing warm,” protested the princess. “I have never been warm. I am not sure what warm is!”

“What melts the ice?” asked the rabbit. Then, before the princess could address this nonsensical question, the creature was gone, blending back into the snow like a secret that intended to be kept.

The princess resumed her journey, lighter now by half her food, head filled with dizzying questions. All her weapons were cold ones; all her spells were intended to shape and change the cold, not to chase it entirely away. What melted the ice? She was sure she didn’t know.

But there were tracks in the snow, tracks as large as the span of her arms, and she passed no houses, and she saw no hunters. The beast was near. If she did not find her answer soon, if cold was truly not the way, then she might never find her way back home.

She was thinking so hard, and focusing so strongly, that she did not notice when a pit opened in the ice, and she fell, plummeting deep down into the darkness that sleeps at the heart of every glacier. She knew the clever ways to call light from snow, and so she did, and saw the beast for the first time.

It was something like a bear, and something like an elk, and something altogether like a beast, with none of the traits of any other thing. She stared at it, and she was afraid. The beast, which had not been expecting to receive a princess, stared back.

And then it roared.

That roar was permafrost and deep, killing chill. It was the cold that creeps beneath the skin, and it was more than that, it was familiar, because it was the frost that creeps into the hearts of lonely young girls when no one sees them for themselves. It was doubt and fear and loneliness, and the princess knew the beast in an instant, because she had made it, one day of isolation at a time. Emotions had been too much trouble; they had distracted from her studies, and so she had exiled them, one by one, out into the cold. That would have been the end, had she not lived in a kingdom where magic fell as freely as snow. The things she had rejected found each other and came together, and now, they were going to destroy her.

She forced herself back to her feet, legs shaking, hands half-frozen. She had done this. Perhaps her death would end it, and her parents could have another daughter, one who would be more clever, one who would not have any emotions to send away. One who was as cold as the ice beneath her feet…

But the ice beneath her feet was not as cold as it had been. She looked down, and saw that where she had fallen was a thin film of water. What’s more, the water had spread, not far, but far enough to show her what she needed to understand. Ice was frozen water, and water wants to move. Water melted the ice. Movement melted the ice.

If the beast was her own frozen heart, then it needed only to move.

“The moon is a beautiful girl with snowballs in her hair, and I love her, which means I know what love is,” she said, taking a step forward. The beast looked confused, and did not roar again. “I saw a talking rabbit while I was looking for you. It made me smile. It ate all my apples, which was very rude of it, but I gave them to it, so I suppose it’s rude of me to resent their loss. It was a funny thing.” Her mouth twitched. “How it hopped! Like it thought it was larger than it was.” And then, to the surprise of both herself and the beast that she had crafted so carefully, so unknowingly, she laughed.

The beast took a step backward, whining. The princess sighed.

“If I can love the moon, I can love you,” she said. “I am sorry I did not love you properly before. I will try to do better, if you will let me.” Then she reached out her hand, and placed it against the great beast’s snout. “I am sorry,” she repeated.

There are many kinds of princess, and all of them have stories. There are princesses in fire, and they act quickly, but they cannot bear the touch of ice; they would steam away to nothing. There are princesses in lands where the sun has never set, and they act bravely, but they have duties to fulfill; they cannot surrender themselves to logic. There are princesses in forests, and they act compassionately, but they cannot grow in cold places; they would dwindle in the snow. This princess was a princess of winter, of endless glaciers and quiet rooms, and when she touched the beast, it burst like a bubble, and all the room was filled with the sound of her laughter.

It took the princess many hours to climb back out of the ice. By the time she emerged, the sun had set, and there was her old friend moon, shining like a snowflake against the sky.

“I am not afraid now,” she said. “Is this why I came?”

The moon did not answer. The moon so rarely does.

The princess returned to her palace, where her parents rejoiced and scolded her in the same breath, and were struck silent when she laughed. The winters seemed a little warmer after that, and the spells that kept the kingdom standing seemed to last a little longer. The people of the kingdom bragged far and wide of their princess, whose hands were cold, but warm enough to melt even the thickest ice. In time, those stories would travel as far as the lands of those other princesses we have mentioned but not considered further, and things would change again.

But that is another tale to tell.

Now rest, my dear, and be at ease; there’s a fire in the hearth and a wind in the eaves, and the night is so dark, and the dark is so deep, and it’s time that all good little stars go to sleep.


End file.
